Category Archives: Audio

One hot summer day, Eric, a student at the local state college, decided he needed some new excitement in his life. He had heard a lot of good things from his friends about a new video game for Xbox called Halo, so he decided to go buy it. Eric had been playing video games for years, but he had heard this one was different. This one was a first-person shooter and apparently had some really amazing graphics, but this particular game allowed players to play against each other online. Eric was excited about being able to play against people from around the world, so he drove down to the mall to purchase a copy.

Eric started small, only playing the game a few times a week after he returned from class. His copy of Halo came with a special edition headset and controller that allowed him to communicate and interact with the people he was playing with in ways that in other games was not possible (click the image below to see what they looked like!).

But the more Eric continued to play the game, the more he wanted to continue to get better and better. He was a pretty self-motivated person to begin with, and this motivation drove him to try to be the best in anything he did. He began playing with the same people every night; sometimes into the wee hours of the morning. He loved playing Halo so much that he even decided to change his ringtone on his cellphone:

Once Eric started playing Halo into the wee hours of the morning, he started sleeping through his classes. He was too tired to go to class, and even when he woke up, all he wanted to do was play more Halo. Although Eric had historically been a pretty diligent student, Halo started to become more important to him than school. Skipping classes meant he started missing assignments, and as a result, his grades began to suffer. However, Eric didn’t care. He only wanted to get better and better at Halo.

This continued desire to improve at Halo began to wear on Eric’s relationships. He had always been a pretty sociable guy with a large group of friends and a busy social calendar. However, the countless hours of Halo began replacing the parties and get-togethers Eric was accustomed to attending. After a while, Eric’s friends stopped calling because they knew he would rather stay in and play Halo than come and hang out with them. Eric had seemingly made new friends online in Halo, but he didn’t realize how this was affecting his real friendships.

The more Eric played, the more the game wore on his emotions. While he was oblivious to his deteriorating friendships, the lack of sleep combined with his overwhelming desire to improve began to make him very agitated. He started losing his patience easily, and his roommates were often awaken in the middle of the night by him screaming and cursing at the TV. In fact, one roommate even videotaped one such encounter (unbeknownst to Eric):

Please note, this video contains language that may not be appropriate for all viewers……

There was seemingly no hope for Eric to break this detrimental pattern. Eric was playing Halo 15-20 hours a day, failing all of his classes, and was completely estranged from all of his friends. His only friends were people he never met in person, only online. In one of his many online sessions, one of his ‘new friends’ mentioned a big Halo tournament that was happening down in Orlando, FL. They all decided that they would buy plane tickets and pay the registration fee that evening. That night, Eric got on his computer and started searching for plane tickets. He found the perfect ticket and entered his credit card information. As he was about to submit and pay to confirm his reservation, Eric received a text message from an old friend asking him to come to a party that night. He hadn’t talked to this friend in months, but the result of the text was an emotional tidal wave. Eric became self-aware for the first time since that warm summer day when he first bought Halo. He realized that he was addicted to the game, and all of the other things he cared about had suffered dramatically as a result.

Fighting back tears, Eric responded to his friend’s text message. Determined to beat his addiction, Eric asked his friend for help. Within minutes, Eric’s friend knocked on the door and came in to console him. The wakeup call did not cure Eric’s addiction, but it was a step in the right direction. Although it was easy enough to stop playing Halo, the uphill battle that Eric faced as a result of his addiction was far from over. He was still failing his classes, and many of his friends were hurt by how he seemingly stopped caring about them for months on end. However, that same drive and personal motivation that brought Eric down the path to video game addiction helped him get back on his feet. Determined to mend all the bridges he burned, Eric resolved to turn his life around. He went out with his friend for one of the most fun nights of his life, and smiled as he went to bed that night feeling like the weight of the world had finally been lifted off his shoulders.

So I don’t think anyone would be surprised to find out that I chose the “Being A Music Producer” audio assignment. The objective of this assignment was to record two parts of an audio track with any instrument (obviously guitar for me!). To begin with, I laid down a rhythm backing track. This was actually part of a song I’ve been working on (so sneak peak!!). Then, I laid down an improvised solo on top of the backing track to add some “spice” in 🙂

I uploaded it to SoundCloud, so you can check it out here–it’s just a small 16 bar snippet but you get the idea:

So for my foray into SoundCloud, I figured I’d try to find the most absurd news headline of the year and read it aloud as a news announcer. Here’s the link to the actual article, and you can hear me reading the headline on SoundCloud:

Well, this one is kind of right up my alley. As a musician, listening is arguably the most important skill I possess. Layering is a recording technique I use all the time when I record my music–I’ve played guitar for almost 20 years and I use three specific types of layering when I record my songs. First, I’ll layer the guitar tracks over each other to achieve a “heavier” sound. Then, I’ll add rhythm guitar parts to add some different dynamics to the song. Lastly (and most importantly as a lead guitarist!), I have to add a guitar solo over the rhythm layer. A song I wrote and recorded with one of my former bands is a good example of all three–check it out here.

So with this in mind, I started listening to the Radiolab “Talking to Machines” podcast. Within the first two minutes, I noticed similarities to my song. Specifically, at about the 1:36 mark, the background music became louder and there was a horn burst when the guy was making a joke about talking to people who were “willing to talk to [him]” during his online dating adventure. In my song, I used cymbal hits to accent certain important moments in the song, and I found it interesting that you can use similar techniques in both music and the spoken word. Sound can both convey and support emotion, so while interesting, it is not totally surprising to hear something so similar in two things that are so vastly different.